Why was the Blood of Christ required for Remission of Sin?

With all due respect, Pastor Larry, I did not know Baptists based entire doctrine on one single verse. I was always taught we were to compare Scripture with Scripture in order to rightly divide the Word. </font>[/QUOTE]They don't. And as we have shown, there is not one verse of Scripture that contradicts us. But unfortunately, you seem hesitant to deal with one of the verses that is an explicit refutation of your view. We are encouraging you to compare Scripture with Scripture, hoping that you will include Heb 2:14 in it.

As for gnosticism, my apologies if I misunderstood. Gnosticism is confusing and has many different strains to it. It comes fromt eh Greek word "gnosis" meaning knowledge. In Colossae, the gnostics claimed a deeper knowledge that really spiritual people had while the common man did not have this knowledge. IN the first century, it was probably not well developed gnosticism but rather the beginning of it. Part of teh gnosticism at Colossae asserted that Christ was not deity, because the spiritual and the material could never mix. So there was s series of emanations (or gradual changes) between God and Christ. At each step, this being lost a little of divinity and gained a little of humanity until in Christ, he was fully human, but not divine. That is why Paul is so adamant about the deity of Christ and not following after the vain traditions and empty philosophies (Col 2:6-7). The worship of angels (2:16ff.) was a part of this gnosticism.

Gnosticism as a whole is so wide and divergent that you can't really sum it up effectively in a paragraph or two.

 

Larry, if we want an answer to why they ignore Heb. 2:14, we should probably find the neighborhood warlock who began this perversion.

Unfortunately today (like in John's day), a distortion of the complete humanity of Christ had infiltrated the church and hawked their teaching as biblical, or gasp, fundamental, when in fact it is gnostic.